generates more media interest. let's see what he's has to say. guess what, it never comes out. he selects the detractor to attack. we think donald trump is lying. i'm not lying. other people are just talking at this. and, anybodyzone who pops up is a loser, crazy, i hack. that's when it creates that dynamic. finally, he declares victory. like he does at the press conference at the trump hotel in d.c.. come in and i'm going to have a major announcement and you can look at my brand-new hotel. is ahe said, barack obama citizen, on the winner but hillary clinton started it.

>> up next, a panel discussion of president ronald reagan's cold war strategy, of focus on cap's peace through strength philosophy helped reduce strategic nuclear warheads in the united states and the soviet union. this is about two hours. [applause] thank you, becky, and congratulations and thanks for running the series on the reagan legacy. legacy ande reagan trying to teach to a new generation, like those icn front of me, the lessons that i see in front of me, the lessons and initiatives of his decisions. also a bit about the difficulties he had within the administration and in the

congress and with the media. academy where he was republican,o, a which was not so popular with the established leaders in the institutions i mentioned. that is forgotten now. it is also called -- the 1980's or call the me decade. i think it was the we decade. the next one was more like the me decade. president this job as very well prepared, unusually well prepared. first of all he started out as a lifeguard. a lifeguard has to make decisions quickly. matters of life and death. war hethe second world was an actor who made films for the american troops on how and why to fight totalitarians, the

japanese and the national socialists of germany. they were not called nazis. they were not fascists. fascists were run by mr. mussolini in italy and the italian fronts were not very active. he fought national socialism in its various forms, which i think communism and national socialism are very strongly related. anti-communists because his own union, the actors union in 1947 was being infiltrated. he knew there were active measures and efforts by the soviets in addition to the fact they were colonizing eastern europe, stalinizing it. he was inbred as a freedom fighter. wrote and im he participated in it, those of us that the final versions, i was

working with senator tower, bill schneider, john lehman, and we worked with build enclave in best bill -- bill vanclaven. is the major for statement of reagan's strategy. the section that deals with foreign policy, foreign affairs, is called "peace and freedom." i always talk about his strategy as being a strategy of peace and freedom through strength. they are absolutely interconnected. a new they could not bps without freedom and they could not be freedom without peace. they were interrelated. andcannot fight for peace have a totalitarian version. ran,latform on which he and wish nobody seem to remember

now, in during the first days of the administration i read parts of it, excerpts, when i went as a representatives to the interagency meetings that were chaotic. there was no discipline. everybody said whatever they felt like. there was no guidance. president's first crisis nsc meetings were areas i did not work -- i worked in the defense cluster and i took the mantle of arms control. that did not come until about march or june. let me set the platform -- in the platform we worked on it and put arms control into the defense sector, nokia foreign affairs section. if you read the guidance on arms control and the platform and all the president's speech is, it was always an issue of defense. you can't do arms control without securing or providing

for the common defense. that was way behind. very much to pleated, very weak weak becausevery of the procrastination of the carter administration who would cut back major programs, especially strategic modernization. israel called out by the president. -- these were all called up of the president. arms control was not treated at the beginning as a major separate issue. it was treated -- the first regarding the administration ad, visible in march of 1981, few months into his inauguration plussing up the defense budget. 17 percent increase in the

budget and specifically funding the programs that carter had cut. the missile programs. the bomber programs. implying, and that became especially to ron, that the framework of arms control that mr. carter had and specifically the assault to 1979y -- sold to treaty of was no longer the guiding way of talking to the soviets. tron --eally was with withdrawn by mr. carter because of the soviet invasion of afghanistan and all kinds of negotiations stopped. this gave an opportunity to mr. reagan. ster because he was informal when you talked to him, even in high saluting

places. that -- he was informal. he would ask very top questions of people and he was very funny. -- 20 havely quite the options laid off and verbally and on the short papers we had arrived, i would write one page summaries of a seven or eight page interagency plotting ing paper andd covered with bracketing language. he loved to have those spelled out on the second page, the differences in the interagency system. the state department was always testing defense. the cia was worried about certain things. jcs had their own views. he tried to integrate. i believe he successfully integrated.

we has a staff tried. to integrate and succeed defense, arms-control, and i have not yet mentioned which he also integrated and i personally felt very committed to, the moral aspects of what we were doing and the strategic. the ethical things were tied in to this freedom concept. the city on the hill which was western civilization, freedom in the united states in particular and also in england and other democracies, that was always the perspective from which he did whatever he did. in a sense he was a lifeguard for his country because his initiatives turn things around. his assumptions were turned around. how do you deal with the soviet union? all the concessions of the previous decade did not work. of nuclear weapons

in particular he was very well aware when he became president as a campaigner that treaties signed by mr. nixon, and i happen to value mr. and to and mr.resident -- i worked for johnson, mr. nixon and jerry ford in the white house. i have been there longer than anybody else in this country. i think bob cates comes next. 1972, nixont in signed three treaties. treaty,t was the start which basically froze some numbers for demo make real reductions. it was not effective beyond national technical means. that means no on-site inspections. the second treaty was the anti-ballistic missile treaty, which i already than opposed

strongly on moral grounds because it was weighted to the doctorate of visual assured destruction -- wedded to the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. experiencing it in the second world war in europe for the first americans a network -- out the hell at a of my never have because i was a british child in germany. when the nexte americans i met included my own father who had escaped and came back as an american soldier killing and liberating his former countrymen. aware ofo be very much preventing totalitarians by using mentally -- military superiority and cheating. the russians cheated on almost everything they did. certainly in arms control. when we re-examined it in the

spring of 1981 and 1982, what to do with the russian asymmetric challenge -- look at the chart i have on the wall here. it presents 25 years when the russians built and built and built and we, after signing the summit agreements, and the third one was peaceful coexistence. the principles of detente agreement which was violated in human rights and every other area, mr. nixon tried to link these things but he shall not assign not a curtailing our defenses. as were banned by the abm treaty. we should have been very robust. the strategic defense initiative that becky mentioned before, the ,art and parcel of arms control to me it was the greatest arms-control initiative ever offered because it prevents

offense of missiles were being used against you. is very expensive. other guys might be getting proliferation and can't quite match. these were linked together from the start in reagan's mind and our mind. the people who fought modernization, and peter qc was involved -- peter hussey was involved at the time to get that they -- the things were linked in our mind. you had to have modernization and you had to have reductions arms, andontrol, in effective verification which was a new standard we got the president to sign onto. not adequate verification or national technical means, but effective. i defined it in and was adopted as the cia having high

confidence, not just confidence, high confidence in being able to monitor and verify every single provision of the treaties we proposed. we also got through -- this was in 1982 -- on the notion of having the jcs have to certify the military for everything we did in arms control. with the united states still be able to fend off or would it prevail an attack? new standards. proposals that were made at eureka in 1982, deep cuts, deep reductions. they had proceeded however by the imf treaty which was in 1981, the fall, where we did not favor in the nsc's same way. the pentagon and tennessee did not fair that -- nsc did not

favor the freeze option that was preferred by other parts of government, deep in high places. and proposed instead a zero option will get the simpsons that the systems we did not want eliminating a -- whole class of systems. there was a strong, new approach in a ship the whole soviet attitude and system about postponing, procrastinating. they thought they cannot hold the allies. and i the things we did, got myself invited at nato meetings. the vice secretary weinberger was on the plane and his delegation and others. we really briefed and worked with allies to get out of the nuclear freeze, which was dominating their parliaments in their streets. newet full deployment of

systems and immediate nuclear force systems. that was a good beginning to a major initiative. 1983s followed in march of strategic defense initiative, part and parcel of that. national systems are defense. i will run through some of the things that that happened. i will mention one other thing, which is in the nuclear testing, when we came into the white on -- the state department and others who mostly favored go for ae wanted to conference of test ban. they wanted a ratification of treaties mr. ford had done. peaceful nuclear explosion tree. -- treaty. there was a test ban treaty that was not being complied with.

all these trees for disbanding nuclear tests. even down to the subclinical levels. tiny little ones. underground once. reagan, it was not a nuclear abolitionist at all, although one of the most senior people in his administration would a book in which he constantly says reagan wanted to abolish nuclear weapons. he wanted a nuclear deterrent and to abolish the threat of nuclear weapons. he said as a long-term objective we will have a less dangerous world. usually blanketed with a free world. there should be radical change in the soviet posture. we could consider that. 20 said no nuclear -- when he war mustuclear ever be fought and cannot be

won. that's what he met. -- meant. we must sees them as an incentive for arms control, arms reductions, and we must have those effectively verified and supported by the congress. he did not do it nixon did with the sole treaty -- salt treaty. he did not dare submitted to congress because they were not passive. reagan, when he had arms control and sdi, he brought it to the congress. we were briefing all the time and negotiating with congress. opposition, o academic and clerical opposition, it worked to put pressure not only first three soviet prime ministers encountered by reagan, but on

mr. gorbachev, it was a party intellectual. did not quite understand what hit him and reagan came. and did not understand how quickly we were building up our forces. period.very dormant i believe gorbachev lost his cool when he tried to undertake necessary reforms, which was redoing everything within the party dominant. like with the chinese are trying to. keep the party in control. perform it from corruption -- reform it from corruption and other things. totalitarian the ability to shoot the opposition and imprison them immediately. when the chinese in 1989 at the period shot and 62 cities people

against the oppression and the uprisings became real, he lost the nerve to shoot. the reason i think he did was he realized a little but before that that his economic system was socialism. they called it the socialist camp, not the communist cap. camp. they could not keep up. the free world, free economy, free labor unions. that is necessary to make progress, to make radical change possible. mr. gorbachev was intelligent enough to not cool enough -- cruel enough to react to the fact he would be losing his hisrine,'s foundations -- foundations of his partners who are running the soviet union for 40 or 50 years. lennin

truth.hs were not there was a coup attempt against him and it was all over. i believe in the next decade the united states wasted its cold war victory and so did the allies. what i see today in russia makes me worry all the time because you could take that chart i have a mobile and update it -- have on the wall and updated pretty. the chinese have not stopped producing new lines of weapons and strategic global reach, imperial reach. haveussians certainly tried to dominate or infiltrated numerous. they are all over the world. what we need our freedom, peas, integration, moral and strategic criteria. then we can get close to what reagan did and applaud the fact

he provided for the common defense in secured blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. [applause] >> good morning. i had the privilege in the 1980's to work for someone who certainly is the greatest american president of the 20th century, and one of the greatest in american history. is --ryone is a speaker had or made a major contribution to the development of very sensible and very important policies that

ultimately contributed to the demise of the soviet union, prevented nuclear war, and advanced american interests across the board. today to efforts portray ronald reagan as a nuclear president. that is nonsense. advanced an approach to dealing with the soviet nuclear threat which fundamentally changed what was going on in the 1970's. change.alled peace with his policies involved the modernization of our nuclear triad in a manner that enhanced national security and strategic stability. they went beyond that. ickem'soyed nuclear sl

widely. both on the surface and in ships and submarines. he deployed the medium-range nuclear missiles to europe that resulted in the imf treaty. and he deployed nuclear artillery. uy call him a nuclear zero g is nonsense. he pursued a policy in arms control in which arms control seen in terms of defense policy rather than as an end to itself or to a quest for some utopia. defense initiative revived the war bond u.s. missile defense program of the carter era and begin to

development of technologies that not protect us against north korea and defend our forward-based forces and allies against the growing theater of nuclear and other forms of wmd attacks. we have a very long way to go but i would ask you to consider where we would be today if our missile defense capabilities were based on the legacy carter programs which was a little more than a single more than an underfunded program to develop a short range interceptor, minuteman icbms. the world that reagan inherited in 1981 with bipolar and very dangerous. many of the threats we see today are already developing but they were not yet seen as serious threats. the soviet union was ideologically hostile communist

dictatorship which was in the process of sending itself into of libyan in were preparations, made worse by the debilitating effects of socialism on their economy. during the bush administration, and russian defense minister stated in the 1980's the soviet 40% ofy budget reached the soviet gnp, which is incredible when you put this into perspective of u.s. expenditures. u.s. military expenditures peaked at 43% of gnp during one year in world war ii. in the 1950's it was 10%. from that point it declined to 5%. the carter of administration produced the hall army, or ships

that could not sale and airplanes that cannot fly. we are almost back to that now in some respects. technology in the 1980's to compensate for the large disparity in global efforts going on in the nuclear arena. presented thean soviet union with a significant military challenge to convince although could not win they never gave up trying to create that sort of capability. reagan did not and history pretty to create circumstances in which communism defeated russia as a major force in the world. the massive nuclear buildup of the soviet union and president reagan engaged in the most comprehensive u.s. modernization

although it80's, was not remotely comparable to the scale of the soviets redoing, if you create a very effective deterrent. continued thetion late carter administration policies on systems that icbm,ed the peacekeeper b nuclear- agm 86 outcome in the ohio class ballistic missile submarines and the trident 2, twisted administration decided to make a powerful missile that could fit into the simmering. the reagan and administration added the stealthy advanced cruise missile, the b-2 cell bomber, -- stealth

tactical aircraft and for a time the so-called midget man icbm which is part of the nuclearization program. fortunately much of it was terminated or dramatically reduce by subsequent administrations, which made a series of bad decisions on nuclear deterrence and national security policies which in some respects contribute to the current crisis we have with russia. plannedt reagan's strategic nuclear force was reduced by 85% in terms of peacekeeperers, the and the advanced cruise missile were terminated without any replacements. as was a nuclear capability of

the b-1 bomber. the program was terminated and it was retired without replacement. the only part of the reagan nuclear modernization that survived subsequent administrations with your higher class submarine, trident to combination -- trident 2 22 b-2 bombers without their missiles. wouldeve resident reagan extent but not to the that it actually happened. he would never have allowed a 20-year moratorium on u.s. nuclear determined modernization or allowed the russians to get a 10 fold advantage in nonstrategic nuclear weapons. we know that because he did not do that. he did just the opposite.

do that. just the opposite. indeed, the weapons that were pulled out of europe as far as presidential nuclear initiatives were mainly built and put there by the reagan administration. 2018 nuclear review confirms reports that go back to 2004 that russia is in violation of the political commitments that ofectly affect the security others, including the 1991 presidential nuclear initiatives. battlefieldated our and much of our nonstrategic the pstrike capability, reasone a major that russia has a 10-1 advantage today with nuclear weapons.

we know reagan would have taken action in face of such a violation, because he actually did in regard to somewhat during issues that arose the 1970's and 1980's involving agreements on strategic defensive forces. reagan took nuclear deterrence nucleariously, and weapons and a defense is part of his deterrence strategy. and indeed, a major hedge in arms control. the reagan nuclear monitor his modernization program not only enhanced the industrial complex, but we could deal through nuclear threats through deterrence, and that -- real,s very we'll and worse than we thought it was in the time period. -- they haven find

been made available, a certain number might be classified. russian government documents and a larger number as a result of the end of the warsaw pact and governmentnd polish released their cold war warsaw pact documents translated into english. then secretary of defense caspar weinberger stated in his annual congress in 1985 "if we are to maintain a responsible nuclear paternity impact on our allies as well as and nuclear pact for the united states, we will have to continue to exploit our comparative advantage and technology. since the end of the reagan administration we have around -- allowed this to erode." at the

end of -- at the end of the obama administration, they were talking about is losing our capabilities, and they were not talking about nuclear in specific. in the nuclear area, we have actually allowed that position to decline in technology has we retired some of the most advanced systems that were developed and deployed under the reagan administration and some of them in the years somewhat beyond that. have, russia and china massive nuclear modernization programs, and that is a description of the russian program of the russian defense ministry in late 2017. 2016, the obama told the congress that the chinese have announced the existence of a new nuke your p.m. --of the df 26 ifr

chinesehich gives the a significant stance for nuclear strikes of their target. time.not have one at this if we were to believe that was going to happen in the 1980's -- and it happened because we reversed reagan nuclear deterrence policy. nuclear posture, i think, is the best u.s. government discussion of the nuclear deterrence problem, and it deals with problems -- it also deals with problems that are post-reagan. statements youhe will read, if you go back and read the reagan administration statements to congress on

defense and here you have special kudos to frank miller, who wrote these things, they are really high-quality and they have continued relevance to deterring russia today. administration has pointed out that it broke with the 1970 approach to arms control as assistant secretary of defense richard perle stated, we have to have clear objectives, military significant outcomes and agreements that are equal and verifiable. he also pointed out that the charge of lack of seriousness by the reagan administration in arms control amounts to little more then that we modify our proposal to permit the soviets into retaining a vastly larger strategic arsenal than the levels that the administration has proposed. criticized reagan

on arms control came to power in 1993. they failed to get the start to byaty, which was negotiated the george h.w. bush --,nistration and ratified they failed in their efforts to conclude a star three treaty, which was to go beyond that. they did manage to negotiate the only arms control agreement to be rejected by a majority of the .enate this is a classic example, and i think it was noted in one of the the approach of the reagan administration saw arms control as a part of a security agenda, not as an ideological crusade.

in the 1980's, there was only a single nuclear weapons designer whohe national laboratories believed we would not maintain a nuclear deterrence, even with testing at 1000 tons of tnt level. delivered at the heritage foundation, the ambassador paul robinson, who was involved in negotiations attempting the ratification of in 1995, we in the u.s. labs requested that the should be set at

a level which is, in fact, lower than one kiloton, which would have allowed us to run some very important experiments in our views, determined whether the first stage of multistage weapons, which was the only type we have, was indeed operating successfully. stage fails, you basically have a dud. reagan revolutionized our approach to arms control , as has been mentioned. responded to russian violations in 1986 by terminating u.s. adherence to withunder an agreement russia or the soviet union. we did not enter into arms in the 1980'sents

without serious preparation and certification of everything we tabled by the joint chiefs of staff. that did not happen in the obama administration, and we ended up with treaties that essentially allowed almost an unlimited expansion of what ever -- whatever the russians could afford and a large circumvention of the options available. and like i said, i have about run out of time, so i will leave with one final thought. reagan's approach to national security, i think, served us very well and the abandonment of his policies by subsequent administrations as it contributed to the current security crisis. if you are reversing the reagan policy on national security,

perhaps not 100% of the time but in a substantial percentage of the time, you're making the wrong decision. thank you. [no audio] >> thank you. much.nk you very, very both of these presentations are excellent. thank you so much for being here, both of you. you know, the heritage foundation is very fortunate when we host programs like this ,o have cosponsors or cohosts and i want to a knowledge today that the reagan alumni association is one of our cohost , and the american foreign-policy counsel is a cohost. the third cohosting group is the mitchell institute for aerospace studies of the afa, and i am going to invite the ,epresentative of that group peter hugh c to come and introduced the panel.

peter, as you heard, was active on capitol hill, and inactive component of the reagan policies during the 1980's and continues to be today. please, and welcome the rest of the panel members. thank you so much. for comingu all here. i want to say particularly thank you to becky. when we went and sat together at that conference back in october of last year, i said to her, we have to regain reagan's legacy and an understanding of it. she said i had the same idea yesterday. that was how this was born, and she said would you like to handle the national security and defense aspects of reagan's legacy? before i introduce my wonderful guest, i want to lay out a couple things. first, i want to say hello to janet nolan, who i work with at george washington university. we do a project of placing nuclear fellows on capitol hill. and willie curtis, formerly within april academy -- with the

naval academy, who has now retired. lectureed me to come about nuclear deterrence, and that was an honor, willy. thank you for being there. i went back to him looked at a 1979 house and senate armed services committee report on nuclear weapons, before the soviets invaded afghanistan. every single nuclear weapon program was cut from the budget request. the b-1, the b-2, amex missiles, no procurement money as well as, as i said, including the be five in the ohio class submarine. every single program was cut. and then i went and looked at 1980 one, ronald reagan's first press conference. the first question was from an ap reporter who said do you believe in keeping the salt to treaty? which as you know, had been withdrawn by president carter from the senate after the soviets invaded afghanistan and

we were under no legal obligation to abide by it because the senate had never agreed to it. the president said basically, how can you call that arms control? as we all know, it allowed a build up to about 13,000 nuclear warheads under this treaty, and i was sitting in the back of the room against the wall where they put young people who are guest, and i was doing some publicly deployments -- public diplomacy for them. you could hear the gasps among the press corps when he said that. the second question was from the head of the upi, and the question was, do you believe in a peaceful coexistence? the president said no. again, the audible gasp from the extraordinary as the president went on to lay out what it was the soviets were up to during peaceful coexistence. he said i have a better idea, and that is we win, they lose, which also dismayed the folks there.

inherited athen narrative that we should salt two, that allowed us to bill up -- build up 13,000 warheads, and we should also except diesel coexistence. that is 1981. about what about -- what about 2017? we inherited the only way to go towards nuclear weapons is towards zero, by the same people who said we should maintain number two. many of the same people and organizations, but it was 13,000 warheads -- that is ok, but now we go to zero. notice the extraordinary difference. the other thing is we should modernize. that was the commonality. even underontrol, assault, we do not need the mx missile. the d5 missile was a hard target, kill capable with it -- weapon. we don't need that. what was fascinating was in 1979 at the height of the cold war, the senate in the house were

cutting every single weapons system, even though at the time, salt process allowed you to go to 13,000 warheads on the soviet side. i think in that context, looking at where you are today, the created,n that reagan which was instead of looking at the nuclear freeze as a means to get rid of everything, he looked at reductions as a servant of modernization, so we modernized while reducing rather than just freezing. it completely turned arms control as traditionally thought of on its head. and that is why i asked some of my friends in the business to come here and speak. ,he first will be frank miller who headed the office of the secretary of defense between head of 1989, and the arms control policy between 1989 and 1993. someone iso hear from

knew during the reagan and menstruation, who was both acting secretary and acting under secretary of the air force, and i was a consultant to the secretary of the air force and major general gordon for all. we will also hear from susan cook, the staff analyst for strategic defense and space arms control. that was between 1985 and 1988, as well as special assistant to the deputy of special defense between 1982 and 1985. these three extraordinary people will now talk to you about not whatwhat the reaction to sam and mark have said, but their perspective not only on the reagan administration nuclear policy, but how -- what is the application for today as we face some really, very, very serious and very, very challenging problems? would you first welcome my dear miller.frank

[applause] thanks, peter. thank you for having me and becky, thank you for having me. let me start by saying that i am really thrilled to see all of the younger people in the audience, because over the past several months, as i have made about 20 public appearances defending the nuclear posture review, it turns out there is a lack of understanding and knowledge about the past about what nuclear deterrence policy is and what it is not, and i am really glad you are here so that you can take part in this session. 1981 as an action officer in the office of peter nuclear policy, where i was working on the reagan administration's review of the

ahanced radiation weapons and cruise missile. and in october 1981, i was asked to head up the strategic forces policy office. it is important to set the context for the reagan period. before mr. reagan was elected, there was a belief in some , particularly in the intelligence community, that the soviet leadership anticipated achieving strategic superiority by the mid-1980's. united states had lost the will to succeed in this area. it was a time that was marked by a debate by the so-called "window of vulnerability," which in its most basic terms meant the soviet icbms would destroy u.s. icbm silos, and we lack the capability to do the same. there was a concern that that might encourage the soviet leaders to contemplate first

strikes. so it was an enormous change to presidenttion, when reagan took office he said some of the things that were mentioned earlier. 1981, he issued two documents which were absolutely critical in turning things around. the first -- i will do this in reverse order. national security decision document 13, which was u.s. nuclear targeting policy. that policy is the presidential document that tells the department of defense how to handle its nuclear targeting plans. that document retains the focus directive 59ential from the last year of carter's presidency, 1980, after the scales had dropped from president carter's eyes. and what this change did was to

move away from something that had availed during the 1970's, which was that u.s. transparency policies were based on your imaging -- mirror imaging. we thought about what was valuable to us and projected that onto soviet leadership, which was wrong. pd 59, carried forward by president reagan, focused on what the soviet leadership thinks and values, look where they spend their money and i will tell you what is important to them. itwas such a good document, was so properly, broadly written ita presidential level, that guided u.s. nuclear weapons policy until 1996. it had an extraordinary run, 15 years for the policy. one of the things that it did was to kickstart a program of continuity of government, that is to say to come up with a mechanism whereby even in the event of a soviet attack the constitutional government of the

united states would survive. why is that important, you ask? it is important because the soviet leadership would send a signal that they could not do thea tape -- decapitate united states of america, and that we would still be able to respond effectively to any , thereby toear use deter that use. there was some in fortunately which in the document that, in context, said that we must be prepared to fight. they retracted nuclear war. and that we would wage nuclear war successfully. that was a bit overblown in its rhetoric and it came back to bite the president. he reacted swiftly to turn that around. this was made all the more powerful by the conjunction with td 12, which was issued the same day.

that made clear reagan's commitment to build a strong nuclear deterrent. it stayed in sharp contrast with soughtny soviet leaders in the carter administration's discomfort with nuclear systems. as my colleagues have already said, it fully modernized the entire triad. most importantly in my judgment, it brought about the d5troduction of the trident 2 nuclear missile, which is still in force today. that is a system that can hold any soviet russian or other target at risk, hardened or otherwise. it was once employed in 1998, 1990 of soviet nuclear strategy, because we had a survivable sea bass target weapon. authorizedso proceeding with the nuclear sea launch.

i will take a step back to tell a funny story. we had proceeded with tomahawk sea launch cruise missiles, which came in three periods, a nuclear land attack version, because we thought it was sovietnt to deter attacks on our land forces. landd this version, version, and the ship version. and the state department, because it was trying to curb the employment of ground launch cruise missiles in europe, tried to kill the whole tomahawk steve seaile -- tomahawk cruise missile program. in 1990, we you used hundreds of tomahawks to take down saddam hussein's invasion of kuwait. so you have this doctrine backed up by modernization. the second area that the reagan administration broke new ground on was in its public posture. there was an early recognition of the appeal of the nuclear

freeze movement and president reagan moved quickly to clarify ahat he believed the classic " nuclear war can never be one and must never be fought." and i will take a bit of a different approach from my colleagues. it was possible for president reagan to have two apparently conflicting views in his head. one is that we had to have a strong nuclear deterrent to deter nuclear war. the other was that he hated nuclear weapons. there is a book by a guy named president reagan and his quest to abolish nuclear weapons. he was horrified that these weapons might be used against the american public. so he did have this quest. it was to abolish nuclear weapons, but at the same time he understood we needed a strong we are deterrent until nuclear weapons could be abolished. thein this public posture, department took a very strong and clear public line.

sent ary weinberger letter to the editors of about 50 newspapers around the country in august 1982, saying we do not believe in fighting a nuclear war, we believe in preventing it. following that, he participated in an extraordinary change -- exchange of letters with a senator named new york -- named draper, which addressed and quite great detail why the administration believed deterrence was important. his testimony, december 1982 at the senate foreign relations committee, i commend you. it makes your this is all about preventing new year war, not fighting one. theannual statements of secretary of defense to congress , which have been attributed takehat to me, and i some, but certainly not all, of the credit, were clear and concise statements on u.s. nuclear forces, why deterrence worked, and why we needed to try

this. the best public statements january 1983etween and january 1989 to justify the existence of u.s. nuclear forces until the nuclear posture deal of 2018. there he clear stances as to why we need these kinds of systems. at the same time, the administration, the defense department published for eight years a book called soviet military power, which again presented to the american public a series of fact as to what the soviets were doing. in the debate we are having on npr a lack of knowledge about what the russians and the chinese are up h that they will say this will start a new nuclear no u.s.e, ignoring that system enters the field until the late 20 20's, while the soviets are putting one in now.

and the soviets were engaged in building some very secret, deep underground command post. we basically declassified and fuzzed up what they were doing in, saying we know it you are doing, we can target you there as well. do not think this will help you fight. the administration has a deep commitment to nato, and you can see that the commitment to the inf systems and even the revival of the enhanced radiation weapons. you can see it in the sale of a missile to the united kingdom, when president reagan made the decision in october, prime minister thatcher came in a few weeks later and said we would like to stay with that system rather than what president carter was going to sell us. by early spring, we had wrapped that up. the reagan administration took a radical approach to arms negotiations, and susan can talk about that. but it was basically reduce, but

don't cap. eliminate waste by using throwaway, which was much maligned at the time, but it cut the heart out of half of the heavy icbm force and allowed us to reduce the possibilities of reg out. i will disagree with shannon mark regarding some of the the bush 41ade in administration, as well as some of the retirements, because i have a very different view on those, but we can talk about that later if you want. there was a willingness and the administration at the same time to review the nuclear arsenal and eliminate obsolete and unnecessary weapons. the nuclear planning group in 1983, the initiative of the genie air to air launch missile from our inventory, a u.s. fighter that shock the missile. and also, the administration demonstrated a willingness to go

all in in support of its strategic systems. when we had the big fight in congress, the president was involved, the leadership with the defense department was involved. we were all involved with that. within the department, secretary weinberger undertook a rigorous oversight for the strategic modernization -- modernization that has beenway committed to secretary mattis today to make sure those initiatives remain on track. in the mid-1980's, secretary weinberger authorized a complete overhaul of the nuclear war ast all ofre-c those war plans to be consistent with policy, because they had all become inconsistent with presidential policy. there were two big surprises -- and i will stop speaking now i want to give my colleagues sometime. there were two big surprises that i was involved in, the first being a strategic defense initiative in which we wrote a speech that was supposed to be

about mx. it turned out a little different. and then a summit with gorbachev , where there was a proposal to either eliminate all nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles. but those are things we can [applause] >> thank you very much for coming and taking time to learn it.t it was a perilous time when we had fallen behind our enemies

and were very aggressive and thought we were going to run the tables and take over. we were getting careless careless intting the use of the nuclear weapons. they thought they could use them and win. fromis how wars start, miscalculation basically. this is important. to read some good of this material and so forth. i am going to mention a couple of macro things briefly. i'm going to go through these things fast so there is more time for questions. as you all know, and i took the key from the tone put together about the red menace, the red pandemic, which began in the mid-1800s, 1930's, where they

were growing and breathing life into their ideas, carelessness, and so forth. briefly we were allies in world war ii, fascist germany, italy, and so forth. there was after that the rise of , andeds in china, russia china falls, nato is created, and the doctrine is promulgated of massive retaliation initially to make up for our week conventional forces, response, containment, defense are formulated. proxy wars in vietnam and other places as expansion proceeds. then there is the red spread and red schism when the red menace continues to grow, but splits. ,he chinese and russians are fall apart over the russian

expansion mainly, the chinese as the to us, terms such , sovietrms control moves in afghanistan, angola, nicaragua, and so forth. communism continues to spread, but at the same time broken up by the moves of richard nixon going to china in 1969, and kissinger. ,hen there was red rollback when i got more involved with all these fine people who have done so much over the years to american people educated and keep the press on us regarding what is going on with strategic nuclear forces in the berries countries, including our own. 1981 is the beginning when reagan became president and brought his personal convictions and principles to nuclear strategic forces and arms

control, and used his political in the community that had begun under nixon and ford. under nixon and ford, there were personefforts by solicito's les rumsfeld to take a look at how weak we were. when he change the strategic , therated operations plan nuclear strike plan of the .nited states there were three options counterforce, counter city, or everything, the warsaw pact, and so forth.

we rewrote it to 24 options. we had to reduce it to 12. that is when a selective, flexible nuclear response, and people thought maybe nuclear war .ould be fought you can strike the allied forces , the cities, fight naval forces. that is the way the thing was , asitten in the mid-70's well as leaders of partners, which we worked on with the demographers, but something that we figured out was demographic groups. the soviet union is run by great russians, then a bigger group is white russians, then there is everybody else.

the guys that run everything are a cultural, tribal group, and they want to keep running things. we let them know that we knew where they all were. they only have 10 million to 20 12 million running the shots and getting the jobs. we had that are completely targeted. we were going to take them out and let everyone else overrun them if it came down to a nuclear war. that got their attention. it was not just the leadership, it was the whole crowd. there were options put together for that. some great things happen when carter came into power after the 1970's when things began to be recognized by nuclear forces. these gentlemen and ladies were part of things such as the , which group, team b exposed the weakness of the carter administration policies,

the debate and defeat of salt to bring together the knowledge that we were in a dangerous situation. these ladies and gentlemen became smart on these issues so they could staff the reagan nsc, department of defense, and so on. we wrote a book to get things ready, a program for military independence in 1979 as part of the madison group that was the beginning of the reagan defense policy, then translated into a chapter here at the heritage foundation for everybody over here that became a guide for the campaign, to help mr. weinberger when he was notified he would be secretary of defense. he called me up and said i want the chapter. i said i don't have it.

it is at the heritage foundation . he said, i'm going to be secretary of defense. i said, i'm sorry. you shouldn't be the secretary of defense. i didn't say that. he said i needed and wanted. i said i can't get it for you. he said, i imagine you have some galleys at home, don't you? i said, i do. he said, i think you better get them. send them out here. i want them. then he couldn't read it. he said i can understand the damn thing. i said this is not the guy to be the secretary defense. abbreviations.e where's the glossary? so i had to do a glossary and send that out. later, i got to see him at the pentagon when i went over to work. along so have to move don't take too much time with anecdotes.

a time when we were the dominant force with reagan and we got lucky before everybody sprung back into action against us. reagan had a lot of personal from his leadership of the screen actors guild. he'd knew what they could do, what kind of active measures they could undertake. he had strong political convictions because of that and knew he could defeat them. with political patience, persistence, and courage, he hung in there. he had charm and political skills as well. he did not get rattled. he was hard line, but did not look in temperate, which -- in temperate. he got a unified national security strategy in place by a lot of smart people, some here, pentagon, nsc.

along sohings moving that things got done. his staff got where they knew the enemy, new themselves, ,trength and weaknesses execution, and keeping messaging optimism in somewhat of a perilous situation. you have tos that keep building. you have to keep modernizing. you have to have exercises and look like you're willing to execute on a nuclear strike plan. you have to keep updating the nuclear strike plan, the weapons, demographic changes they are. you have to create and find other political levers that are economic, personal, embargo, sanctions, to keep pressure on foreign leaders egos they are the ones with the hands on the button. if you can put pressure on them

outside the nuclear forces arena , then you can also dissuade them from thinking about using nuclear weapons. reagan had a fortunate blend of personal charm, background, personal experience, courage, and an intellectual capability adapt toabout this, to the knowledge, courage, and perspectives many people in this room, and the heritage foundation has been writing about this, and put those into practice at the white house and bring people along with them. it was a great privilege to be a part of that. there are stories that go with that time. i will stop there and let susan talk, and she will take how they got things going. [applause]

susan: we will try to be very i have thely because advantage of being last. perhaps just a few examples on the reagan approach to arms control. we talked about peace through strength. this is negotiating through strength. the past reagan achievements and arms control would not have been possible without our modernization programs. second was an emphasis on not just numbers, but stabilizing force structures and how arms control contributes to that. 1987, a reallyis

good example of you have to have something to negotiate with. the nato position, the global zero option, was very clear, sovietsple, if the retain intermediate range missiles, we would deploy. if they gave them up, we would. criticizedtion was by many, including in the u.s. government, as being something the soviets will never accept. treatyr the other imf achievement, unprecedented verification. i think there were seven different types of arms sites inspections, plus data exchanges , a permanent presence at the production0 facility. the soviets will never accept

that, but we gave them a reason. they did not want pershing ii and ground launch cruise missiles in europe. when we started the deploying in 1980 three, the soviets walk from the negotiations thinking we would say we are sorry, and please come back. no. we kept deploying. a little over a year later they said, ok, we will start negotiating again. and you got the imf treaty. now the russians are violating it, but maybe that's a story we can talk about in a bit. stabilizing features, really startin the start i and ii treaty signed under george h.w. bush, but the groundwork was set in negotiations under reagan. you have heavy bomber accounting

toes to give an advantage slow flying, stabilizing systems. you had a reduction by one half in heavy icbms, a ban on future onms, a limit of 10 warheads future icbms. so, reductions in the most dangerous, destabilizing systems. ii,go farther with start where the sides agreed to abolish all icbms. i can imagine's the russians would have accepted that if we icbm,t have that type of me c which we had with peacekeeper. afterfter, arms control start ii, those features, those major features part of the reagan legacy get very much

weekend. the moscow treaty 2002 is just about numbers. new start has verification, but weaker than the start treaty. there is no limit on the warheads per missile, so the soviets can do their superheavy under the new treaty. no limits on modernization replacement. perhapss, and i think the russian canyon torpedo my the a new kind to be discussed in the implementation commission. and for the first time, deployed missile warheads are counted as those actually carried. i, it was important to count the capability of the missile. not in new start, which raises

serious breakout considerations. compliance, more on and again, the importance to the reagan administration that arms control not just be verifiable, but that it be enforced. radar, example is the what was it? two football fields? a huge radar that was illegally .ocated under the abm treaty we discovered it in 1983. the reagan administration, including at the very highest level, at summit, as well as ministerials, kept saying it had to be dismantled. ofin, there was a lot pressure within the government not a bigss, oh, it's

deal. let it go. we have more important things. the administration kept saying, no, it must be dismantled. that andts fought fought that an font that, and finally in the fall of 1989, in september, they came to president bush to say, ok, we will dismantle it. the next month, edward shevardnadze made a speech before the supreme soviet calling it a blatant violation of the abm treaty. the obama administration in'sion on imf violations and some degree of contrast. finally, i would like to echo and perhaps build a little bit on what my colleagues have said about the importance of outreach, both diplomatic and

public, to the reagan administration. i spent a lot of time on the , andspeaking to groups both governmental, abroad, public here, whether it was about strategic modernization, the sdi. the yearsficials over have mentioned to me that no administration before or since -- as the reagan administration in keeping allies informed. they may not have liked to the policy, and i can think of some conversations where they were told they did not like the policies, but they could never say they were not uninformed. that was appreciated. treaty is a really good

example. we had a major public diplomacy campaign to counteract the nuclear freeze movement here. soviet relentless propaganda campaign in europe against wasoyment, i believe it november 22, 1983, it paid off. the german parliament voted to approve the deployment of pershing ii on west german territory, and diplomas begin the next day. walkedthe soviets thinking that would turn the tide of public and governmental opinion. it didn't. in arms control was born. [applause] >> thank you, all five of our

speakers. you did an extraordinary job. i hope some of you here today we'll look at this and go through it again as it is on the heritage website. to maketo find a way this available to all the universities, colleges, history departments, and political science departments. recently time magazine did an article at the end of the cold war, and they are trade gorbachev. it did not mention the name reagan. it did not mention the name of the president of the united states who pursued unsuccessfully ended the cold war, which toes you have the narrative of history gets written over time. it is critical that it be remembered accurately. i wanted to ask all five of the panelists a question. a number of members of congress i have talked to routinely say that the nuclear posture review has now gone to the armed

services committee in the house, the senate, without a single cut. there have been amendments to cut out the low yield warhead, a thames to get rid of ,he money for a cruise missile a low yield weapon, and it has been quite successful, but their argument has been, you know, we have to have some component of arms control to make it group of to a middle members of the house and senate that we always have that are the people that give us that margin it isn we count votes and not unanimous, but better than a partyline vote or something. , aen when i wrote a piece draft i sent to frank miller, i said we have reagan's vision,

which was preserved slow fires, commerce, get rid of icbms and go to sea. your fast flyers will be at sea. they are not 100% on alert. pick a number, 50% on alert, which means any first right calculation basically goes out the window if you have such a system, which is the point of start ii, ratified by the duma and united states congress. it never went into effect. we have forgotten about that issue. thele are talking about alerting, taking warheads off the missiles, changing the computer so you de-target. is, do you have on arms control component, particularly when you have a russian government violating the

start, anding new not much interested in arms control? we had a program called megatons to megawatts, where we took russian nuclear material and shifted to america and put it into power plants. that was a great program that bush 43 initiated. n endhas said, put a to them. we substitute something else to something we do in the modernization era as a way to cementing, which is a consensus to go for it in the nuclear posture review am a but certainly not overwhelming. as i said, a switch of 25 votes either we could change that. denmark,tart with you, , then down -- thin mark go down the panel. >> [indiscernible]

and others, we and others drew heavily on that nonpartisan, bipartisan behavior, and there were democrats who were jackson democrats. richard perle was one of them. they were very prodefense, and very anti-soviet on humans rights issues -- human rights issues. they supported reagan. reagan drew on them. we brief them, and they briefed us. that carried forward, so people understood from charts like this one that i put up there, and i could show you why we would talk

about the asymmetries, read, take questions, go to the schools, to congress over and over again and do the soviet military our reports. the first one was only on the soviet forces, read forces. blue soted they at the you could see the asymmetry. this chart on the screen is based on that. i would take each addition of these, one a year, to the geneva talks with the soviets once they in and, and they started intense way in 1985 when gorbachev came in. these twoing five of the negotiation deputy, soviet, general, the intelligence guy. i would make public ceremony of handing him five for his information. the first time i did it, he would say, don't do that.

why not? there are secrets in there. "secrets" and people would surround us. i said from home? the soviets did not tell their civilians what this basic data was. i said this is in the new york times, the washington post. you need to open up. agree one going to what reductions to make and lest have the basic information. you have it. said it is wrong. he never said it is a lie. a could not refute that. the same thing happened in the congress. if we did anything like this today, we should draw nonpartisan support of fax on asymmetries of soviet violations. we should do first a violations report from the white house and 1984, in january, supported by

the general arms control advisory commission, committee. that was nonpartisan. we had commissions for other things. we had verification testimony on nonpartisan basis. that's how you get it through. that is my answer. peter: thank you. mark? >> thank you. do we need arms control or is there something better? arms control, generally speaking, hasn't worked very well. one of the major reasons has been noncompliance with these agreements, russia, but certainly not limited to russia. endemic many respects in the multilateral agreements. in 1982, and said i suspect he probably wrote the speech, simply collecting agreements will not bring peace.

generally reinforce peace only when they are capped. otherwise you are building a paper castle that will be blowing away in the winds of war. as i mentioned in my talk, andan terminated the salt i , treaties,reements because of multiple russian violations. it had an enormous positive effect on arms control. within months of his action, we imfeved a breakthrough on and start treaty. as susan pointed out, the fact we were deploying the intermediate commit medium-range missiles in europe had a big role to play in this. the other thing was the russians were totally paranoid that

everything they see in aviation is true. even if it is just discussion that never got anywhere. the program was canceled but you know the russians believe their own propaganda and that was also one of the big reasons we made the reykjavik breakthrough. to contrast this with the imf -- if iyou had the --ld find the exact quote rules must be binding, violations must be punished,

words must mean something. during barack obama's administration, there was a major violation, probably more .han one of the imf treaty a writer in the new york times that they 2014 stated united states informed its nato allies this month that russia tested new cruise missiles, raising concerns about moscow's compliance with a landmark arms control accord. ofalso said that by the end communityintelligence believes that it was clearly a major violation. the original obama response to

departmenthe state 2012 report was a sentence, actually two sentences which ind, parties in the treaty october 2003 reached an agreement and there have been no breaches. repeatedement was several times through 2014. they talked about it but actually -- but did nothing.

in early 2017, they said the russians had begun deployment on likeunlike, well, somewhat the trump administration confirmed it immediately. it is a completely different between the see reagan and trump administrations on compliance issues and that is encouraging. will have future arms control negotiations? i think we will. are they likely to be more successful than previous ones? i have a lot doubts about that. i think the trump administration has a lot people in place who can do a better job negotiating but if you don't deal with compliance, it does not matter. peter: i think the first thing

to say is that we need to accept that arms control treaties are armsn and of themselves -- control treaties are designed to increase stability and provide enhanced security. when a treaty fails to do that, it has lost its purpose and when treaties are violated, then the treaty parties that continue to comply actually suffer international security, where the violator gains advantages. russia today is a serial violator of arms control treaties. russia stands in violation of the helsinki final act, budapest memorandum where they guaranteed the territorial integrity of the ukraine, the simple accord where they promised to get -- the

istanbul accord where they promised to get military forces , the agreements signed with the gorbachev and yeltsin, the open skies treaty, the vienna document. as we learned a couple weeks ago, the chemical weapons .onvention we can't continue to do arms control negotiation with a country that violates its commitments. to somehow come back into compliance with these treaties, where we somehow able to get strict verification on the lines of the original stark treaty, arms inf control may be something we could talk about again, but right now, to consider plunging headlong into a new agreement given eight existing treaties which are being violated suggests that you do not care about the violations. mistake ande a huge

exactly the wrong signal to send to vladimir. >> i think that that is fair much the case. it needs to be comedic aided and elevated to the public through the media which is difficult because they do not want to carry this type of negative message. potentially the call for some senators in order to placate a new committee, potentially a committee that has some congressional mandate on arms control, intelligence and compliance or some name like that, could be thrown out as a controlry to bring arms to the front. ofticularly along the lines delving into these violations,

making a list of them, explaining them, putting the wanture on the members who to talk about arms control and want to have arms control components making it clear that, if you do not have in arms control component and you want to talk about arms control, we will talk about it and the first thing that needs to be talked about is all the violations and the continuing arrogance and endangering behavior of the russians and to some degree, potentially rope in the chinese and some of the things they are doing, although we have not really had arms control treaties with them, but it may be time to their behavior, even though it is not a violation destabilizings behavior. remake of thes a committee on present danger or something that has more of a blessing such as the u.s. china

security commission, that might be some way to allow people who want to talk about it to talk about it. come and talk about it. ring your concern and we will talk about it and bring your facts to bear on this and, use as a way to get some public understanding and knowledge of what is going on. i, too, would go with what frank said. adding one or two points. one is that you have to have something to negotiate with. 2013,we really saw in people may have forgotten that president obama made a proposal arms control negotiations, both strategic and in short systems. the russians dismissed the

proposal and the idea of any negotiations out of hand. there was not anything left that they wanted from us. not to as i can tell, put too fine a point on it, i don't know that that will change that much with the strategic modernization program. it is hard for me to identify something in the program that we might be willing to trade. for example, for me, the biggest thing on my agenda would be de-merging or at least some kind of reduction, some kind of constraint on what they can do in that area. we do not have any more investigators. think that the ground-based strategic deterrence was designed that

way. have?ncentives to they i do not have the answer. one arms control answer in a is thew -- near future question of how they start. fires stash it expires on february, 2021 and so the beginning of an administration, second term or not is always chaotic. bethat issue would have to faced. is, is new start for all its faults better than nothing, particularly on the verification? noton-site inspections are what the start treaty were. but is something better than

nothing? i do not have an answer but think we have to address the question. thank you. >> [applause] >> thank you. we are just about at the witching hour for ending the program and i wonder if anyone in the audience has a quick question there like to raise. right here on the front row. stand up and wait for our mic. introduce yourself. henry from george washington university. i was on the nsc staff at the same time that he was and none of regions -- reagan's strategic programs could have been achieved without the economic programs. about inarea to think terms of reagan's legacy, how he

turned around the economy. a major revolution in thinking about how to deter war. it is not mutually assured destruction but mutually assured attention. my question is why there was so little follow up on it. he got congress involved in the public involved in trying to understand what he was doing by way of reacting to mutually assured destruction and trying to find a more humane way to determine because he was as the panel suggests, determined to deter. i think he was consistent in reykjavik when he walked out on gorbachev where he wanted to restrict everything to testing in the laboratory. if you remember the press conference afterward, there were very senior people other than reagan who looked very dour about his rejecting met

wonderful the tragic trade that was being proposed by gorbachev. realized that it was insurance of protection, it was against proliferation, it took over the fact that this was -- we had bilateral treaties with the russians. the koreans and russians were not affected. the russians were violating the treaty anyway. he emphasize those issues but the others, testing of air defenses and ibm defenses on all kinds of things, there in the compliance reports. people just did not want said,ng that mr. reagan

it was opposed by quite a few people because he said it and mutually assured destruction was considered as late as the obama the clinton mean period. to destroy each other, mutual annihilation, it should have been deterrence. a systems analyst came up with that for mr. kennedy and unfortunately mr. nixon combined that treaty -- reagan was brave enough and moral enough and --ategic enough to emphasize oni started a seminar series nuclear defense as part of the commission report and i still run it. i've done around 7000 events. missile defense was half of my 1983.rs starting in

a number of things happened. one is that missile defense was used as the primary lever to end the cold war. beyond any doubt. unfortunately, when the senate flipped to the democrats in 1987 , money for missile defense was diminished. was negotiating with the russians to do a global protection against limited strikes which yeltsin announced at the united nations you was in favor of. be then, certain powers that during the 1992 campaign pulled it back. when clinton came in, the first thing, less aspen who was my unfortunately got up and said, i'm going to take the stars out of star wars and 40% of missile defense

systems and that took us an entire decade to pass the missile-defense act. now the policy of the net it states but unfortunately it had various interpretations. at the end of the cold war to bush, we lost 15 years. because of the change in environment and the history, everything was fine, we do not have to worry about this anymore and look atou go from all of our commanders, their number one request is missile-defense. bob kaplan is right when he said from north korea all the way through the south of asia all the way through the middle east is one great big overlapping missile range because missiles

-- they are launching 500 rockets into saudi arabia and another group like has a lot throwing rockets -- like rockets, throwing think what would happen if no .issile-defense was available we are talking about hamas, so you are right, there was a pause and that was politically. we are behind the eight ball on nuclear deterrence but thank god we happily have because i think what would've happened if aspen's decision in 1993 was carried out today with everything on the back burner. >> we will have one final question here then we will wrap up.

don't feel like you need to stand up. >> a quick description. the best communicator we have had of any president was ronald reagan. i was the deputy director of extreme he gave us instructions. had a usiaaries, we office in moscow. then he asked me after two years , he was a communicator, to go over to the state department as ambassador and special advisor and then, he asked me to talk to the assistant secretaries with some recommendations, which i did and my main one was we need an undersecretary and you

mentioned the public diplomacy is extremely important and i do not think our government is doing enough now without usia to expand our positions. >> that was ambassador gill robinson who served president reagan. we are going to have to wrap up. but thank you all very much for being here. this has been a very important panel. it is just one element of the reagan legacy that we need to reignite interest in and knowledge about so that not only do american people have a recollection of the foundations ,f the reagan administration but the current leadership team in washington dc understands the shoulders on which they can stand to do the right thing. thank you all for being here today. let's thank them. >> [applause] we appreciate your time and attention.

announcer: you are watching american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook. this year, c-span is touring cities across the country exploring american history. next, recent visit to lubbock texas. you are watching american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span3. >> it is a huge agricultural area. even though we have over 250,000 people just in lubbock proper, not including the surrounding communities, we are called the hub of the area, but is still revolves around agriculture. one thing we have learned is how